by: James Renford Powell
The one concept that above all others plagues human beings, and has done
so for all of recorded history, is the concept of duality. It is a
hidden enemy, created in wrong thought (relative consciousness), and fed
by fear. It has divided the world of man and has been the instrument of
more death and destruction than all the terms we commonly use to
describe evil. And yet the people of the world, as a whole, continue
trapped in the same belief pattern. What is this thing called “duality”?
Virtually every Church and most of the religions of the world have
propagated this idea in their doctrine. Why is it such a pervasive idea,
and why has it attracted such a following?
Many of the precepts of Hermes Trismegistus, an ancient Master in Egypt,
can be found within virtually every world religion. It is possible that
misunderstanding of this ancient teaching, interwoven with doctrine,
may have led to the belief in dualism. Even initiates of Hermetic
teachings today write in such a way that can cause confusion. The
Hermetic principle of Polarity is presented as, “all manifested things
have two sides, two aspects, two poles, a pair of opposites with
manifold degrees between the two extremes.” This is a description of
Polarity and not duality, but it is obvious how dualism can spring from
an incomplete understanding. It is from the doctrine of Zoroastrianism
that the universal struggle is described as the forces of evil against
the forces of good is derived.
A clear understanding of three Hermetic Precepts might give you some
clues as to how the fallacy of duality has been derived. 1)
Correspondence – “As above, so below; as below, so above.” To some
people this meant two worlds, as opposed to many planes of the absolute
unity of Universal Being. 2) Polarity – “Everything is dual; everything
has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the
same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
extremes meet; all truths are but half truths; all paradoxes may be
reconciled. The fact that all paradoxes may be reconciled clearly
indicates that all paradoxes are a part of the whole. 3) Gender –
“Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine
principles; Gender manifests on all planes.” So, we have multiple planes
and the masculine and feminine principles are manifested in each and
all are part of the whole.
The definition of Polarity which says, “Everything is dual” is taken to
mean the world is dualistic. A closer look at each of these precepts and
it is clear that while these poles and opposites are present they are
present within the whole. Man sees forces on the other side where we go
when we die. He wants to believe there are other planes but the
experience of life and death chill him. He has a hard time reconciling
life and death as just phases of the whole. For those who accept
duality, the world is full of calamities that are thrown at them by evil
forces, and how well they handle them determines whether they go to
heaven or hell.
We hear people talk about how a city is racially polarized as if this in
itself was proof of duality. In fact, the word “polarity” is proof of
exactly the opposite of duality. Duality is a concept that states that
there are two forces, good and evil, warring against each other. It is a
lie the intellect has created, and we have accepted. There is only one
power, and the other is created in our ignorance by the intellect and
fed by our fear. When you say that a city is racially polarized, you are
actually confirming the unity of humanity. There may be significant
differences, culturally and economically, but polarity simply means the
extreme points of one thing. If you have racial polarity all that is
proved is that we are all human. The Universal Law is Absolute Unity.
The perception is duality.
Most theology is dualistic in nature. Only a few Christian churches
emphasize that there really is no competing power with God. The Unity
Movement has made its statement of belief in the “Absolute Unity of all”
the linchpin of its positive affirmations. Their affirmation is “There
is only one power and presence in the universe, God the good omnipotent,
the everywhere present Principle of Absolute Good.” In virtually every
other theology, the universe is a battleground between good and evil. On
the one side we have the Almighty God who created the heavens and the
earth, and on the other side we have Satan, a fallen angel who reaches
for and has an equal power status on earth. In fact, he is depicted as
having control of earth. The world turns, and the battle rages for the
souls of men. Everything is defined in terms of good and evil.
To say that there is only one power and presence in the universe is not
just a statement of adoration and praise to God. It is a statement of
principle. It is a statement of the Universal Law of Absolute Unity.
When we say this, we are confirming that there is no other power but
God. We are in essence renouncing duality and the idea of a second power
that can compete and war against God. We are recognizing and affirming
that evil and satanic forces are a creation of the intellect and a
perversion of the reality of Absolute Unity. One cannot deny that
negative and fearful thinking is the cause of negative and fearful
consequences. Why? Because all thought creates. Thought will create
constructively or destructively, but it always creates. Our world, our
lives are our creations. What people refer to as evil might more
accurately be seen as the destructive results of fearful, negative and
wrong thought. It comes from man’s intellect and creates the perceived
barriers to God. It instills in man the belief that there is a
separation from God, which has never existed. It cannot and could not be
because God is in man and everywhere present. Absolute means ABSOLUTE.
If God is omnipresent, he is everywhere. So what could be considered
evil? It can only be our perception of separation from God. It has no
reality in truth.
Even some of the more enlightened religious systems retain a lingering
vestige of the thought that man has somehow been separated from God and
must go through a process of purification or karmic learning in order to
be reunited with God. The Catholic Church has its purgatory in which
the last bits of sin and perdition are removed before man can return to
God. Some metaphysical schools, while teaching the Universal Laws, have
not been able to get past duality. At least one of these schools
actually teaches that there is the Universal Law of Duality. We have
those who talk about good karma and bad karma. They say that this bad
karma has to be paid in order to go back to God. There is no such thing
as good karma or bad karma. There is only karma or balance. One might
call it bad karma because an experience is unpleasant. However, all
experience is attracted because we need the learning experience. In our
pain, we don’t recognize or appreciate the experience, but it is part of
the Law of Balance and Equalization.
How do we know that duality is a false perception, and what do we do
about it? We can know through the process of identifying and verifying
the Universal Laws in our lives. We can know the fallacy because we can
understand the Universal Law of Absolute Unity. We understand that to
look for solutions, or to place blame outside of ourselves, is a useless
exercise. We know there is only one power in the Universe, and it is
everywhere present. What we have perceived as a separation from God is
only a creation of the intellect. Even with all the evidence of order in
nature, we have been able to see only chaos and destruction in the
storm. We forget that it is a product of natural order. In our concept
of spiritual things we have perceived God as out there somewhere and
heaven as up there! What we have perceived as an evil force is a product
of fear created and fed by the imagination of the intellect. The
intellect/ego, left to its own devices, seeks to establish itself as
separate from the whole. It will go to extraordinary extremes to protect
itself and establish its own power.
The ego does not need the protection it seeks in separation. It doesn’t
need the creation of a great world struggle between good and evil to
give it meaning. It does not have to feel smarter, superior or to have
been chosen as God’s elite to give it self-worth. It must recognize that
it is its own worst enemy because it seeks to block itself from the
all-powerful whole of which it is an indivisible part. As Emily Cady
writes, “All joy and strength and good spring up from a fountain within
one’s own being, and if we only knew this truth, we should know that,
because God in us is the fountain out of which springs all our good,
nothing that anyone does or says or fails to do or say, can take away
our joy and good.” We must deny fear any of the power that springs from
our imagination because the imagination will create constructively or
destructively. It will create one way as easily as the other. We must
deny the intellect the right to create the barrier. We must recognize
polarity is found everywhere and in everything, but understand polarity
to be parts of the whole. We must become fully aware that polarity and
duality are not the same. The first is a fact of existence and the
latter a mutant perversion that exists only as a perception of the
intellect.
The Kabbalists (Mystic Judaism) say that the spiritual and physical came
from the same substance and affirm that the apparent duality is really
only a mistaken view of the universe, that in reality there is absolute
unity. “A barrier need not be physical, like a gate or fence”, to be
effective, declares David Sheinkin, author of Path of the Kabbalah. Men
and women die every day because of the barriers erected from their
beliefs. The commonly held worldview I refer to as duality contributes
most to the barriers. The concepts of good versus evil and God versus
Satan could be overcome with awareness of only one power existing in the
universe and the concept of separateness from God as a perversion. Even
what we call the spiritual dimension and the material dimension cannot
truly be understood as duality because they exist in the same place at
the same time. They are a part of the whole.
Duality is a perception of man, created by man and is derived from man’s
own mistaken concept of his Being. The concept itself remains his
greatest enemy because this ignorance of his real nature keeps him
thinking that he has been separated from God. The good news from Jesus
and other great masters was that God dwells in man. God is at hand
within, and all power is available to each of us with the awareness of
this presence. God has never left us, and we have never separated
ourselves from God because it is not possible. What we have done through
the intellect is put on blinders. We have always been with God and will
always be with God. We experience in the body for purposes that only
the IAM Consciousness knows. It is this consciousness that directs us,
and not the relative conscious we know as our ego or intellect. Only
human intellect/ego, with its free will, can even conceive the concept
of separation from God. Man is the only entity that can come up with
this idea! This separation from the Light of God is only in the
imagination of the heart where the negative intellect, combined with
emotion, strives in a darkness of its own making.
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